• First and second images are species of the genus Altarnenthera, and the last one is a species of the genus Apomoea.
• I mounted the preserved plant in an A3 Poster Paper.
• I used packaging tape to hold the stem/s and Elmers Glue to paste the leaves and flowers.
• I am unsure if the quality of the herbarium went bad due to the degraded leaves.
I wish to write an independent research about the flora in my neighborhood. However, as much as possible, I want my herbarium specimens to look “research worthy.”
Your mounts look good. It is usually recommended that at least one leaf show the underside, so you want to be doing that if you aren’t already. I am not sure whether you are thinking to make a private collection or if you have in mind to donate your specimens to an official herbarium sometime. Herbaria use special acid-free paper for mounting specimens (available at herbarium suppliers like https://herbariumsupply.com/) and would likely not accept your specimens mounted on poster paper, so you need to know that looking ahead. There are lots of resources online for preparing herbarium specimens. Good luck with your project!
Very cool! In addition to what janetwright wrote, I’d suggest that you visit an herbarium if you can, at a university or a museum, or possibly a professional botanist’s office. If you ever want to donate your specimens to a university or museum herbarium, they will have standards for how they want and need to receive specimens. Plus, then you can look at how their specimens were prepared. I’m volunteering at a local university herbarium and I am learning a lot about all the details that go into curating plant specimens.
Just a quick note that many herbaria do not care about acid free paper. Vascular plants contain lignin and will likely degrade at their own rate regardless of what they’re mounted on.
We also house each card-mounted specimen inside a flimsy made of a folded piece of A2 paper.
However, we use card stock rather than paper for mounting and some herbaria sew their specimens rather than gluing them. If you’re collecting with the intent to donate, most herbaria would probably prefer them unmounted. In these days of the Nagoya Protocol, many herbaria will insist on verifying that you hold all relevant permits also.
I took into account the comments and suggestions from my first “Critique My Herbarium.”
Comment #1 from Quercitron - Labels at the bottom right
Comment #2 from Janetwright - At least one leaf showing the underside
Yet to do:
Comment #3 from mftasp - Mount the specimens on cardstock instead of paper, and sew instead of gluing
Notice on the top right that there’s a small piece of folded paper. I thought of doing this because I saw a video on YouTube, having it serve as a “fragment paper,” where, instead of damaging the specimen, scientists can use what is inside the fragment paper to use the fragments of the plant for DNA.
They look pretty good. Don’t stress about sewing them, PVA glue works well dabbed in small spots. Card stock is preferred because its stiffness helps with specimen durability.
The labels contain most of the pertinent information, if you felt like adding more, the main ones I can think of would be habit, habitat and other notes, such as abundance, etc.
Having fragment packets is great, but I only bother adding them if there are loose fragments.
